Sunday, July 6, 2014

It is safe to say without indulging in exhaustive
documentation, which could prove to be a mere exercise in erudite futility,
that like the Siesta and the Harana, the art of the Zarzuela, as used to be practiced in the
Philippines, was something that the Filipinos unwittingly inherited from
Spanish cultural traditions. “Used to
be” is the operative phrase. In the age
of Youtube and the MP3 as standard currencies for the consumption of
entertainment, the up close and personal components in the practice of these
art forms have, to our collective impoverishment, been lost to posterity
forever.

My earliest exposure to poetry, as practiced by people and
enjoyed in a social setting, in contradistinction to as manifested in the
infinite beauty of nature and natural phenomena as obtains in the blending of the
sunset with the landscape and the rainbow ever so ubiquitous in a typical
tropical day, was in listening to the Sarsuela**
which was a regular feature of the weekend community dances that I was luckily
exposed to during my preschool days.
Those weekly nocturnal escapades were sustained through the wee morning
hours by the sheer unfettered and inexhaustible enthusiasm of a one-man band,
whose performance was unpaid for but largely expected by the community for the
simple reason that his talent was the hallmark of his citizenship. The Sarsuela
was an intermission feature introduced to give the musician the most required
and a well-deserved rest.

On hindsight, this unmistakable bucolic setting as described
earlier in Chapter 5 had all the trappings of a fairy tale. The dances were sometimes held as a means of
raising funds for some noble cause or tangible project or another. But oftentimes, they were held as the
community’s attempt to celebrate life, to create a festive mood as a
well-needed and most-deserved break from the humdrum which characterized
farming life. As a preschooler, I was
not yet aware of political history, nor of the existence of Spain, for that
matter. The beauty of the poetry
emanating from the musical drama of the Sarsuela
touched my consciousness unadulterated by cultural bias or preconceived notions
of what art was supposed to contain, look, or sound like.

The format was that of a dialogue between a man and a woman,
verbally indulged in the ritual of courtship.
The verses were extemporaneously minted on the fly by the protagonists
sung to the monotonic melody of a ballad, unaccompanied by any musical
instruments. That the event regularly
called upon my father as the male protagonist, did not hurt to keep my
attention riveted through the proceedings.
Most of the words they used were too profound for my uninitiated mind to
comprehend, but that early exposure to the wealth of metaphors and similes in
the language, far from weighing me down with frustration, made me dream that
when I grew up I should be able to attain mastery of the language and at least
equal if not surpass my father’s brilliant performances of the art form.

Unfortunately, for me, I was constantly told at an early age
that I could not carry a tune, a verdict which was mainly derived from my
perceived inability to sing in harmony with the group during the ritual of the novena. As much as this did not prevent me from
occasionally belting out a tune while gallivanting in the woods, when I was
relatively certain that there was nobody within reasonable hearing distance, it
did definitely put a dumper on my musical aspirations. It had to take the irrepressible hormones of
adolescence to kick in and the fertile venue of the art of Harana, now irretrievably buried in the bowels of oblivion in
obsolescence, for the sparks of inspiration to ignite the smoldering embers
into a glowing flame of expressive resonance, unfettered and unafraid.***

Shelley famously observed, as alluded to in Chapter 11 below
that “poetry is the language of the imagination.” My experience with it has been that it is
more the expression of the spontaneous celebration of being alive, far beyond
just the joys of living. Over and above
what is conceivable, the delicious agony and poignant ecstasy of the tangible
here and now constitute a compelling elan for poetical indulgent
escapades. The turmoil of the soul
itself, in the entirety of its manifold dimensions and levels of complexity, is
the proper province of poetry.

Exhibited in the few following pages are the crude relics of
the struggle of my soul to stay whole, afloat and above the corrosive vortex of
the ruins of time. Bereft of elegance
the verses may be, they are nonetheless the embodiment of the struggle of a
soul in search of a justifiable and sustainable meaning for being.

==|==

Chapter End Notes: The
notes are itemized below in the order that they were referred to in the
preceding text. They have been included
herein to facilitate the curious readers’ penchant to verify any and all
information that has been only tangentially mentioned in the text.

**This spelling transformation as
we transition from Spanish to Pilipino has been rendered inevitable by the
absence of the letter “z” in the Pilipino alphabet.

***Thus, in my sophomore year in
Kyoto University when the Chancellor summoned me impromptu to sing on stage of
the makeshift amphitheater fronting the athletic quadrangle where a good
portion of the 35,000 student populace congregated to witness the Foundation
Day festivities, I obliged with my version of Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine without
breaking a sweat, to a respectable resounding ovation from the crowd.

Blinking at the Antics of Putin

When it comes to the country’s Foreign Policy, there appears to be very little confusion as to who is responsible and who should be punished. They are not necessarily the same entity. Moreover, whoever is responsible is not necessarily susceptible to punishment.

About Me

I was blessed with loving and caring parents who inculcated into my consciousness an appreciation of the notion of the good, the beautiful and the true, along with the value of hard work and the mental habit to examine the merits of any proposition that needs to be acted upon or taken as gospel.
Cf, http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2009/12/02/no_longer_a_church-going_christian.thtml
Born in the evacuation camp of World War II Philippines, it took the Japanese Imperial Navy almost a full year to learn of my being born, due to communications lag at that time.
The important thing is that it decided to surrender shortly thereafter on the premise of quitting, to limit the damages before the full implications of my being around was brought to bear on the situation and determine the trajectory of events.
It was a roller-coaster ride ever since: Never a dull moment. This narrative clearly proves that modesty is among my most tightly guarded virtues.
So help me God.